News headlines in January 2022, page 17

The use of explosives that lie dormant, particularly in populated areas, is “a persistent and growing threat to children and their families”, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday, expressing deep sadness over the death of eight students in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan.

The UN and partners launched a more than $5 billion funding appeal for Afghanistan on Tuesday, in the hope of shoring up collapsing basic services there, which have left 22 million in need of assistance inside the country, and 5.7 million people requiring help beyond its borders.

AUSTRALIA, Jan 10 (IPS) - For the first time since 1990, China has (re)opened an embassy in ManaguaNicaragua, less than a month after Nicaragua cut ties with Taiwan. The (re)opening of the embassy on January 1, 2022 comes amidst the backdrop of US-China tensionsparticularly over trade and Taiwanas well as worsening Cross-Straits relations.

Blantyre, Malawi, Jan 10 (IPS) - The toilets in the maternity wing of Namatapa Health Centre in the populous Bangwe Township in Blantyre, Malawi’s commercial city, fell into disrepair a few years ago. So, pregnant women who come to deliver their babies and their guardians use two pit latrines.

Amid record global displacement, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, on Monday urged European countries to prioritize the better protection of people fleeing war, conflict and persecution. 

The Secretary-General, António Guterres, strongly condemned on Monday the “appalling” attacks perpetrated over the weekend in Nigeria’s Zamfara State in which scores of civilians were killed.  

Jan 10 (IPS) - Many newly independent African countries in the 1960s inherited regional and ethnic inequalities in formal educational attainment. These new states bound together sub-national regions of diverse ethnic and religious communities. The regions differed in their exposure to missionary activity – the main vector in the spread of formal western education in the colonial era.

A group of independent human rights experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council has condemned the continued operation of the Guantánamo Bay detention facility in Cuba as a site of “unparalleled notoriety” and “a stain on the US Government’s commitment to the rule of law”.

After a recent wave of attempts and coups d'état in Central African Republic, Mali, Sudan and Guinea, The UN Special Representative for the region told the Security Council on Monday this resurgence, particularly in West Africa, “is often the consequence of political practices that are completely out of step with the aspirations of the populations.” 

Teams from UN migration agency IOM were mobilized on Sunday after fire swept through a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, home to thousands of Rohingya who have fled violence in neighbouring Myanmar.